U.S. Voices Dismay on Release of Hijacking Warning

By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr., Special to the New York Times

Published: March 24, 1989

WASHINGTON, March 23—
Bush Administration officials today expressed distress at the disclosure of a hijacking warning to American airlines in Europe. The episode again raised the issue of public access to security information.

The issue has festered since the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, in which 270 people were killed. That bombing followed a series of security warnings, which were not made public until after the disaster.

The most recent warning, issued by the Federal Aviation Administration on March 16, said three men with Arabic names might be planning to hijack a United States airliner in Western Europe. It was disclosed today in the British press.

The aviation agency said today that its warning did not identify a specific airline or airport or say when a hijacking might occur. The agency, which usually does not comment on such security bulletins, called its unauthorized release ''counterproductive.'' Additional Security Measures

Security officials in Britain, West Germany and France all said the threat was being taken seriously, and American officials confirmed that airlines had taken additional security measures. Because the warning gave details about who might hijack a plane, the precautions included searching and interrogating passengers fitting that description. At British airports, the resulting delays were said to be substantial, but airports in Frankfurt and Paris were not visibly disrupted.

An embarrassing security lapse was disclosed today by Independent Television News of Britain, which showed videotape of an incident on Monday in which three youths boarded an empty British Airways jumbo jet. The incident apparently occurred in a maintenance area operated by the airline near Heathrow Airport.

Relatives of some of those killed in the Pan Am bombing, along with several members of Congress, have proposed that security bulletins be made public, perhaps in a less detailed form than the secret messages that are normally sent to airlines, airports and police authorities.

''There is a two-tiered warning system here: some people get warned and some people do not,'' Daniel Cohen of Port Jervis, N.Y., the father of a victim of the Pan Am explosion, said today. ''They either protect us or they warn us. Right now they're doing neither.''

Aviation security officials, in a closed hearing today of the House Public Works Transportation Subcommittee, argued against broader disclosure of such warnings, according to people familiar with their testimony.

Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner, who attended the hearing, announced today that he had directed the F.A.A. to begin an investigation of ''who leaked this sensitive information.''

He called the disclosure ''a very serious matter,'' saying it had compromised intelligence efforts, endangered airline passengers by providing information to possible terrorists, and harmed the efforts of airlines to increase security.

But Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, a New York Republican who has called for publicizing threats to aviation, said that he believed the public should be told of the existence of terrorist threats, even though the bulletins are written so frequently that most international travelers would constantly be told of current warnings. #3 Men Are Named Documents published today in a London newspaper, The Daily Express, disclosed that the Federal Aviation Administration had warned of a possible hijacking by three men identified as Jamel Hahmud Talid Muhammed, Ahmed Muhammed Salim Abuzayni and Khalour Muhammed Yafar. The bulletin said they might be using passports of Bahrain, Pakistan or Yemen.

According to a document obtained from Interpol, the international police organization, counterterrorism experts have been unable to identify the subjects named in the security bulletin. Nor could Interpol confirm the report of an impending hijacking, according to the document, which was sent to security officials in the United States and elsewhere on March 21.

The Interpol document referred to the men as ''Libyan nationals,'' while The Daily Express said they were Lebanese. American officials would not comment on this point.

The authorities in Washington denied an assertion in The Daily Express that diplomats and military officials were warned to change their travel plans over the Easter weekend because of the threatened hijacking. They said the bulletin made no mention of the Easter weekend or any other time period.

The warning, they said, was sent to airlines, airports, foreign governments and diplomatic stations. The bulletins are meant for the sole use of security officials responsible. It is illegal to disclose their contents without permission.

In the last six months, there have been at least half a dozen security bulletins issued by the aviation agency that warned of possible hijackings, according to a listing of the bulletins published last week by Representative Cardiss Collins, Democrat of Illinois, chairwoman of the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Transportation. None of the suspected hijackings took place.

In all, 27 security bulletins were issued in 1988 and at least seven are known to have been written this year.